King Leo and the Magic Book
Leo was seven years old when he became King, which was inconvenient, because he'd been planning to spend the summer building a very ambitious tower out of blocks.
The palace was enormous. The Prime Minister worried about everything and owned an excellent hat. The crown was too large and had to be held on with a pin. None of this troubled Leo much. What did trouble him was the book.
It lived in the library behind a velvet curtain. The clasp had rubies in it. The Prime Minister said, with great sincerity: "Do not open that book." The Chancellor said the same. Even Nurse, who had opinions about very little, said it was probably best not to.
Leo opened the book.
The first creature he found was a bluebird — a painting so vivid it almost seemed to breathe. When he turned the page to read about it, the bird simply flew off the paper and out through the window, singing.
He sat with the book for a long time after that, turning pages carefully. A butterfly the colour of autumn left its page and circled his head twice before drifting away. A gentle, white-winged hippogriff stepped out of its illustration and stood quietly in the library, looking at Leo with calm, amber eyes.
Then Leo found the dragon.
The illustration was extraordinary — fire-red above and gold beneath, wings like cathedral windows, eyes the shade of deep emeralds. He turned the page to read the text.
The dragon came out with the sound of a foundry collapsing, nearly taking the library ceiling with it, and disappeared through the window in a trail of smoke and scattered tiles.
For three days it occupied the hill above the town. It burned a moderate amount of vegetation. It melted two weather vanes. It ate one horse, which Leo felt very badly about.
He thought about it for a long time. Sending soldiers hadn't worked — the dragon had simply sat on them (no one was killed, but they had to be levered out from under its paw). Sending the Prime Minister hadn't worked. Nothing worked.
On the fourth morning, Leo saddled the hippogriff — who had stayed very sensibly in the palace gardens throughout, eating oats — and flew to the dragon's hill.
He landed a careful distance away. The dragon watched him with its green eyes. It was the size of a large house.
"I made a mistake," said Leo, loudly, over the wind. "I let you out when I shouldn't have. And I've come to ask you to come back."
He opened the book to the dragon's page.
A very long moment passed.
The dragon lowered its enormous head until its eyes were level with Leo's. It breathed out, slowly, through its nose. The air smelled of woodsmoke and something ancient.
Then — with the deliberate dignity of a creature that intends to do a thing because it has decided to, not because it's been asked — it stepped back into the page.
The book closed with a sound like a thunderclap.
Leo sat on the hill for a while, breathing. The hippogriff nuzzled his ear.
He clasped the ruby clasps. He flew home. He put the book on the highest shelf in the library and placed a chair in front of it.
The Prime Minister found him there that evening, sitting very straight, thinking hard.
"Well done," said the Prime Minister.
"I should have listened," said Leo.
"Yes," said the Prime Minister. "But this is a much better story than if you had."
Leo considered this.
"Good night," said the Prime Minister.
"Good night," said Leo.